Dorset History Centre

The Dorset History Centre (formerly Dorset Record Office) is the archive service for the county of Dorset, England. It collects, stores, preserves and makes available documents relating to the history of Dorset. It is a local authority archive service, run by Dorset County Council and jointly funded by Dorset County Council, Bournemouth Borough Council and the Borough of Poole, serving all three authorities. The oldest document in the archives is from 965 AD.

The Dorset History Centre has scored consistently well in The National Archives Self Assessment programme, which evaluates local authority archive services on a number of key indicators. It received a 4* rating in 2010 – the highest rating which can be awarded.

Dorset Record Office was founded in 1955, and based at the County Hall in Dorchester. It expanded through the remainder of the 1950s by taking in the archives stored at the Dorset County Museum, and becoming the Diocesan Record Office in 1959. The Record Office continued to be based at County Hall through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, with a new research room being added in 1971. In 1991 a new purpose-built office was opened on Bridport Road in Dorchester, with approximately 6 miles of shelving capacity in environmentally controlled repositories, including a special storage area for modern media. In 1997, the Record Office became the joint archives service for Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole councils. The county’s Local Studies Library was moved into the record office building in 2005, at which point it became the Dorset History Centre.

The Dorset History Centre holds a wide range of archive collections created by organisations, families or businesses based in Dorset. It holds records for the Church of England parishes in Dorset, including parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. It also holds some records for other denominations. The Centre also holds the historical records of the County Council, the district and borough councils and predecessor bodies. Other such public bodies represented in the collections include the local courts, prisons and hospitals.

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